


a light in the darkness

by admiralty



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s11e09 Nothing Lasts Forever, F/M, Feelings Realization, Missing Scene, Sex, The X-Files Revival, but let it try, the darkness finds them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22033810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty
Summary: Things are different now. This time she has nowhere else to go. Suddenly she’s living with him again, suddenly she’s home, and she never had the opportunity to make that choice. Everything is happening so fast, too fast, the irony being that she knows it’s taking fucking forever.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 18
Kudos: 164





	a light in the darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MonikaFileFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonikaFileFan/gifts).



> Prompts: #1 “We’re not just friends and you fucking know it.” and #20 “I think you’re just afraid to be happy”
> 
> I got this as a prompt but it turned into something much bigger than I anticipated. Thanks Monika, I’m sure this isn’t what you expected but I hope you like it 💕
> 
> Thanks as always to Kasey, Fiona and Nicole for the beta.

  
  
She can still feel it, like a ghost presence: Mulder’s hand beneath hers, how warm and inviting it had been against the cold countertop, how he’d squeezed back reassuringly as if to tell her _it’s okay, Scully. This is all going to work out eventually._ Somehow he’d known, and it was as if nothing in the world had mattered to either of them in that moment but each other; not the neglected breakfast plates with hardening egg yolk, the buzzing of cell phones, the _ding-clank_ of the cash register drawer. 

She was still unsure where they stood. But she’d reached out to him, made a move. A small move, yes, but powerful. In the bright light of morning some things had become clear. When she held his hand, she was home again.

“It’s nice just being with you again,” she’d told him. “Together.”

He’d looked at her, questions in his eyes. “...Are we together?”

It hadn’t been the first time he’d asked her that question over the past few months. It reminded her of all those years ago when they were hiding from the FBI, how he'd asked her over and over to marry him and she'd politely declined, over and over. Even then she hadn't known why. It was just a feeling; it hadn't felt right.

_Are we together?_

Sitting next to him in that diner she hadn’t known the answer. She wanted it to be true, but was it yet? Were they, really?

“Come home with me, Scully,” he’d urged her, despite her silence.

_It’s time to go home, Dana._

She’d agreed to follow him home, like so many times she’d followed him before. Now night has fallen, and once again they are standing here together in a situation she isn’t sure she’s ready for. She wants to be ready so badly but she’s afraid, so afraid.

Of what? Of what, now?

She wishes she knew. She wishes things were simple between them. She wants it all to be uncomplicated but it isn’t.

He stands in their bedroom in sweatpants and a white T-shirt, holding a pillow. She knows he plans to head downstairs to sleep on the couch, to be a gentleman, to not be presumptuous. But she can’t do this. She can’t let him sleep on the couch tonight for so many reasons but primarily because it reminds her: of Mulder, deep in his darkness, oblivious to her presence in their bed. Of how she’d waited for him to come back to her. How she’d waited for them both to come up for air.

How she’d waited for the moment she would be enough for him. 

She’d known even then it hadn’t been simply his illness that had torn them apart. But she’d said it over and over again to herself over the years like a mantra, turned it over in her mind again and again, _endogenous depression,_ because it was easier to turn to a clinical explanation than to admit the truth: that they had simply failed each other. 

“Don’t go sleep on the couch,” she says. “I will.” She reaches her hand out for the pillow.

Even as the words escape her mouth she knows they sound ridiculous. She and Mulder have slept in the bed together, even recently. They’ve had sex all over the house, even recently. 

But things are different now. This time she has nowhere else to go. Suddenly she’s living with him again, suddenly she’s home, and she never had the opportunity to make that choice. Everything is happening so fast, too fast, the irony being that she knows it’s taking fucking forever.

He shakes his head, refusing her offer. “Not a chance.”

She sighs. “What do you want, then?” 

“Me? What do _I_ want?” He gestures towards himself. “I want you to come home, Scully. Really come home. I want you to sleep next to me in our bed again.” He looks at her with those eyes she always tries so hard not to let melt her resolve. “I want us to be happy together again.”

She’s stunned speechless; not for what he’s revealed but that he’s revealed it at all. She marvels once again at this new Mulder’s ability to communicate so openly. He’s much better at it than she is lately. She wishes she had the courage to speak her truth. She wishes she had his strength.

“But this isn’t about what _I_ want and we both know it,” he says softly.

The fact that he wants her back isn’t a surprise to her. He’s made it clear over and over again for some time now. It’s up to her to move them forward. 

“I don’t know how to explain how I’m feeling, Mulder,” she begins. She wants to communicate with him so desperately but she’s rusty. She’s been rusty for twenty-five years. “It’s just that... everything that’s happened between us since our separation has been happening because it had to. Getting back on the X-Files, spending all this time together…” she trails off because his face is beginning to fall. She doesn’t mean to hurt him. She’s loved every minute of it. It’s just not the way she’d imagined their reconciliation, whenever she’d had the presence of mind to imagine it.

He looks at her awkwardly, expectantly. She can tell he wants to understand, and she wants to tell him to stay here, to just crawl into bed with her and never, ever leave. But it still doesn’t feel right.

_I don’t see there’s a choice._

There hasn’t been a choice, not really. Not for the two of them. It feels like there never seems to be. Getting back together with him can’t happen due to simple circumstance. She and Mulder have been forced into each other’s orbits by circumstance their entire partnership.

No, for this to be real it must be their choice. _Both_ of their choice.

“Look, Scully, I get it,” he says somewhat sadly. “I know you’re not here right now because you want to be. You were dragged back onto the X-Files when I know it’s the last thing you want to be doing. And the fact that it took your house blowing up to get you back in our bedroom feels significant.”

“Mulder--”

He puts his hand up and she can tell he isn’t angry, just exhausted. This new Mulder doesn’t get angry. “Forget about it, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

She grabs his arm to stop him. “Please, don’t go, Mulder. Don’t be upset. I don’t want to fight.”

He has a look in his eyes that physically pains her. He hasn’t done anything wrong; in fact, he’s doing everything right. Everything. He’s practically perfect and it’s making all of this harder, not easier.

“I want you here, Scully,” he says. “I’ll always want you here. But you have to want it, too.”

He steps closer to her, so close she can feel his breath.

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” he asks quietly. “How many nights I’ve laid in our bed and reached out to find you and you weren’t there?”

She fights back tears thinking of him all alone in their house, futilely attempting to fill the void that she’d left. How many times she’d done the same, and considered making the drive to Farr’s Corner in the middle of the night just to slide into bed with him and feel his arms around her, so desperate she’d been for the warmth of his embrace.

“I do know,” she says, barely keeping it together. “I wanted to come back so many times, Mulder.”

“Then why didn’t you?” he asks.

She looks up at him beneath lashes beaded with tears. “You know why.”

His face softens because he does know why, and she can tell they’re both remembering a night not so long ago on a pull-out sofa. How the time and place had been ancillary; letting him in again had been an inevitability. 

She’d joked to herself that she’d done her time already, so many years, on and off; that she could do the celibacy thing again if she had to. She’d tried dating other men but it never went anywhere. She’d missed sex with Mulder too much; immeasurably. 

Physical intimacy was something they’d withheld from each other for countless reasons over the years, even since they’d met. When she’d finally allowed herself the luxury of reveling in his arms it was as if she’d been reborn; as if life finally meant what it was supposed to mean. Finding that kind of love with him had felt fated. But it seemed that comfort was always ripped from their grasp. First, when Mulder had been taken away from her before they’d even begun to get comfortable. And when he was returned to her months later, they were parted yet again with an abruptness that shook her to her very core. Strengthening her walls and preparing for the worst had been her only survival tactic. 

After being finally reunited after Mulder’s trial, for many years after that it seemed time stood still for them. They were no longer alone. They’d had each other, only each other, and it had felt like that was the only thing that mattered.

That feeling didn’t last, however. Be it circumstance, or timing, or simply fate throwing them yet another curveball, the solace they’d found in each other wasn’t sustainable. Preparing for the worst wasn’t an approach either of them could give up easily; it had become the norm for them, not the exception. Their foundation had crumbled, and she now knew it was because it had never gotten a chance to form properly in the first place.

After she left, there were times she’d been tempted to just drive over, no words, and let him make her feel something again. But she knew that could never happen. She couldn’t play with his head that way, or his heart; she didn’t want to lead him on. And there was absolutely no way she would risk Mulder’s mental health over a momentary lapse in judgment and a brief window of pleasure. There was so much more to them than sex; it just wasn’t who she was; it wasn’t who they were.

Perhaps the only thing she and Mulder had discussed with any regularity during their interim was his health; how he was feeling, if he was taking his medications. She’d always been satisfied he was staying afloat, but had kept her distance. 

Distance kept her safe.

“Being around you would have meant giving in,” she admits, “and giving in would have been dangerous. For us, but especially for you, Mulder,” she continues. “I was so worried about you, as your doctor, as— as your friend…” She trips over the words.

She’s tried this line with him before. She hasn’t forgotten the look he gave her when the words tumbled out of her mouth the last time.

 _Dangerous ground…_ _As your doctor, and as your friend…_

“And...?” he urges, frustrated. She knows he wants her to say it. _As your wife._ Their marriage certificate is ten feet away in a locked safe she still knows the combination to. But it hurts; it hurts to say it aloud.

“And… yes, Mulder. Friends,” she says instead. It’s a challenge and she knows it. She wants to tell him everything she feels, she wants to, but something is holding her back. “I don’t know what else to call us right now.”

“Stop that, Scully! Just stop!” He isn’t yelling, he’s frustrated. He has that face that looks like he’d cry if he’d only let himself. “This is us, Scully. _Us_.” He gestures between them. “Why does there always have to be a qualifier, a rational explanation? Some label for you and me that isn’t just _you and me?_ ”

He moves into her, taking her face in his hands and pressing his lips against hers in a soft but desperate way that reminds her instantly of an underground holding cell near Mount Weather. She lets him; lets his tongue enter her mouth and claim her as his. It makes her think of a time when it really was just him and her against the world. Even if only for a moment, she wants to remember how it was.

He pulls her in close and she flattens her palms against his chest, wanting him so badly, needing him with a throbbing ache she can feel deep down inside as he intensifies their kiss, his tongue meeting hers, a current of desire thrumming between them in eager anticipation of reunion.

She moves her hands upwards, sliding them across his shoulders until they’re threading the soft hair at his nape. It’s damp and he smells freshly-showered, although his jaw is rough and unshaven. _He’s right_ , she thinks. As always, her head is getting in the way again. This thing between them is most certainly something that cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced. It never has been. He is everything to her, all of the things, but in this moment he feels like her husband above all else.

Mulder pulls away, breathless. His large hands encircle her tiny waist and he holds her tight against him.

“That’s what this is, Scully,” he breathes against her lips. “That’s all it’s ever been. You and me.”

_You and me._

He pulls back, eyes closed, and holds his forehead against hers. “I’m so tired of waiting. We’re not just friends and you fucking know it.”

She doesn’t know what to do. Of course they’re not just friends. None of this would be complicated if they were ‘just friends.’

“I know, Mulder,” she says quietly. He holds her upper arms firmly, their heads locked together. “Of course I know.”

He nods against her and exhales. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to push.”

“You’re not pushing, Mulder. It’s not you, it’s…” How can she make him understand when she barely understands herself? That this isn’t about him anymore, it’s not even about _them_ anymore, not really. This is only about her own hangups, her own confusion, her own guilt. It is she alone who is holding them back this time.

He won’t understand, he can’t. Not until she can understand herself. 

His eyes close again and so do hers. “This isn’t a game to me. It’s our lives, our life. Together. You and me, Scully.”

She nods. It isn’t a game to her either, so much as it’s a puzzle: yet another puzzle for them to solve. All the pieces are here, it’s just a matter of snapping them into the right positions.

He takes her face in his hands again, each time like he’s throwing her a life preserver. “You’ve been my constant for so long and lately everything feels so… un-constant. I’m just tired... of inconstancy.”

She wants to put an end to their suffering, but things aren’t that simple. “I’m tired too, Mulder,” she says. “But what I’m tired of is the darkness. I wonder every day, all the time, whether it’s going to end. How it’s going to end.”

He sighs, shakes his head. “You may not think so, Scully, but I wonder the same thing. All the time.”

There’s only one way this could all end, and she’s known it for twenty five years: right by his side. But just because she loves him, there are no guarantees. Just because he loves her, it doesn’t mean this won’t all turn to shit again. 

“I love you so much, Mulder, you have to know that,” she whispers. Tears prick her eyes. It’s not unusual or revelatory for her to say it. They say it all the time. They said it while they were apart. “I’m just… afraid.”

 _There it is._ Her deepest fear: that she will let him down again. That, once again, the foundation of whatever this is they are rebuilding could crumble like a house of cards at any moment.

“Of what, Scully? What are you afraid of?” he whispers. 

She shakes her head. She’s said too much already. It hurts to think of the answer.

“Please, tell me,” he says.

Still, she says nothing. She’s trying, she really is, but Dana Scully has her limits.

“I think maybe you’re just afraid to be happy, Scully,” he says. “Is that it?”

She says nothing. He’s right, as usual. She curses his brilliant profiling mind, his ability to see through her so completely. The fact that her efforts at hiding from him are completely useless, even now. 

This is the answer, the real answer. This is why she’s having so much trouble letting him back in. Her heart aches with the truth. She _is_ afraid to be happy. She’s absolutely terrified. Happiness for them only means sadness is right around the corner, every time, without fail. 

And she always fails.

“I think you’re right,” she admits, after a long silence. 

He looks at her sadly, sympathetically. She knows the look well; the one that means he’d do anything to take her pain away. To make it his instead. But she doesn’t want there to be any pain anymore, for either of them. And that’s the problem. Because there always is. There always will be.

She reaches out to take his hand like she did in the diner. It’s the only thing that feels right anymore, the only thing that makes anything okay. “I don’t know what I want right now, Mulder,” she says, helpless. “But I do know... I don’t want you to go.”

He looks at her tenderly and steps to her, kisses the top of her head. Tossing the pillow behind her onto the bed, he reaches out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. 

“Then I’ll stay, Scully,” he says simply. 

He inches forward slowly, perhaps giving her an out, but she pulls him into her by his neck and their lips meet again softly, gently. She reaches down to lift the bottom of his shirt up, only breaking contact as he lifts his arms to allow her to remove it. As she does, a powerful scent of home radiates through the air; the powerful scent of him.

She steps back and gazes at his body, her hands delicately tracing over his pectorals, his feather-soft chest hair, her thumb circling a nipple. Every time she’s able to admire his body lately she’s in awe of how well he’s taken care of himself, how apparent his return to health is. How she can see it with her own eyes.

He leans down to press soft kisses to her neck, one hand reaching behind her to squeeze the flesh of her ass beneath the T shirt she’s wearing. One of his; always one of his, lately. She wants him around her all the time, it seems. His other hand cups a breast, gently, and she gasps softly, pushing his hand away. Her breasts have been sensitive lately for some reason. 

Just the proximity of him, his taste and his scent and his nearness is creating a flood of desire between her legs. She runs her hand along his shaft, standing proudly against her belly, waiting, wanting. 

She wants him, too.

Without any more prelude she pulls her shirt up and over her head, sits down on the bed and pulls him down with her, feels his heavy weight settle atop her, their hot skin clashing, bronze against alabaster. He kisses her everywhere and she closes her eyes, letting him love her. His strong arms lift her as if she weighed nothing, shifting her back onto the pillows. 

It isn't long before she can't wait any more. She grips him firmly in her hand as he guides himself home and as he fills her something clicks into place like it always has. 

“I do want you, Mulder…” she breathes into his ear, surrounded by the thick heat of him. He begins to thrust slowly, purposefully. Passionately. “I need you.”

His reply is throaty and desperate. “I’m right here, Scully.” 

She shifts her body a bit to feel him above her; his weight, the whole of him. He threads his hands behind her head and looks deeply into her eyes, and it is not fast or vigorous, it is languid and measured, eternity passing in moments, like it always has been with the two of them.

She lifts her pelvis to meet each thrust; his velvety heat plunging within and withdrawing slickly. She’s wet, so wet, and he’s so hard. All these years later; how does she make him this hard, he make her so wet? How do they still fit so perfectly together?

Her little pink friend she’d been forced to relinquish back at the warehouse could certainly do magic, but there is nothing like the magic of _him_. 

Her Mulder.

She looks up at a vast sea of stars through the skylight above him, his breath in her ear, over and over, and she breathes into his as if they were sharing a set of lungs. She wants to breathe next to him forever. 

Even amongst her emotional turmoil she can feel the build of her orgasm, a wave in the distance of the stormy sea of her mind. She’s always considered herself lucky she can come this way; blessed, even. All her previous lovers had to work so hard but not Mulder. Never Mulder. 

She hears his steady breathing in her ear, his strong hands wrapped around the base of her skull. The slick draw and pull of their love as he moves within her, and his eyes: the ones she’s always lost herself in but truly, the only place she will ever find herself.

There is a flash behind her eyes, and in front of her eyes, behind him in the blackness, the stars shine through. He moans her name and with this sound she is sent through the roof, over the moon, hurtling through the atmosphere. She grips his muscular shoulders and exhales a single breath. One long, steady breath, an eternity in his arms.

Then suddenly, inexplicably, and perhaps with unfortunate timing she hears the voice of Ahab, adrift at sea, full of regret. 

_The length of one breath, one heartbeat._

And with this breath she experiences a moment of clarity. 

She’d been so focused on looking away from the darkness they’d fought for years, the external forces at work doing everything they could to take away their happiness, that she hadn’t realized the truth: that the darkness was, after everything, only in them.

It had been of their own making: creeping in more and more each time she looked the other direction. Each time they’d refused to communicate their fears to each other. Each time she’d said she was fine when she wasn’t. And she’d done everything she could to pretend it wasn’t there.

What had driven her away, truly? It wasn’t Mulder’s obsessive nature, or even his illness. It wasn’t the circumstances that had gutted them.

It was them, all along. The darkness was them.

She’d given up instead of facing that darkness. Without realizing it, she’d become someone different than the person she used to be. How can she justify the time she'd spent ignoring all the signs of their deterioration, all the signs that had been present for years? How can she admit that instead of simply existing within a thousand yard stare she should have done something about it, she should have saved them?

Why had it been so difficult to trust in their happiness, to let it flourish? To let it overcome their darkness?

Lying here in his arms now, she realizes there’s still a darkness inside her, too. Maybe she needs to figure out how to release it. Maybe it’s the only way she can get herself back. 

Maybe it’s the only way to get _them_ back.

She clings to Mulder tightly, her constant, her touchstone. He stills inside her, carefully laying down next to her and rolling her into him. She drapes a leg over his hip and enjoys the feeling, the closeness she’s been denying the both of them for so long. 

Perhaps the darkness ends when they decide it ends. Perhaps it can look for them, but they do not have to answer the call. It has to be their choice, together. 

Perhaps it always has been.

_Let it try._

She’d been ill-equipped to understand what he’d truly meant by that. And they’d been ill-equipped at the time to follow through on that promise. 

Things are different now, she can feel it. _He_ is different. And for the first time in years she truly wonders… _is she?_

Is she adrift like Ahab, doomed to carry regret and heartache into her next life? Or has she finally found her way again? 

Mulder pulls the covers up over them and holds her close in his embrace, kisses her forehead. After several moments pass, another eternity, he speaks once again.

“Scully?” he asks gently, so gently.

“Yes?”

“Are we… together?”

She wants to be, so much. She wants him back as badly as he wants her. But now she needs to figure out how to move past her own darkness. It has to be right this time, it has to be perfect.

It has to be forever.

 _Almost_ , she wants to tell him, but it sounds like a tease. She isn’t interested in teasing him. She takes his hand, brings it to her lips. They have yet another silent conversation. _Soon, I promise_ , she says with her eyes. _I’ll wait forever_ , his own eyes reply. And she knows he will.

He reaches out to turn off the lamp on his nightstand. The room is plunged into darkness but he is her light. He is right here, beside her. He will be right here beside her again tomorrow, and again the next day. She knows it.

And soon, on the final day, the last moment she can pretend they aren’t bound to each other permanently, she tells him she is ready, softly into his ear. In a sanctuary full of people praying for a miracle, he is her own.

 _No more waiting,_ she whispers. _I’m finished with our darkness forever._

He draws back from her declaration, pensive, thoughtful. She can feel him thinking the same way he can always feel her as he nods. 

“I’ve always wondered how this was going to end,” he says with the finality she’s wanted for years. The numbing embrace of the status quo no more; he’s ready, too.

An end to the darkness. A beginning to their happiness. It’s what she asked him for all those years ago, and they are finally ready to see it through. It’s taken her so long, far too long to realize the truth but she knows it now, clearly. _A to B to C._ It’s the only truth she needs.

He nods, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips that only she could discern, and lights another candle. The flame burns brighter than it ever has before.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I actually think I understand S11 Scully more because of your prompt, Mon, so thank you for it, truly. xoxo


End file.
